Rod wrangles the teeming hordes of Thomas Jane fans for us. His signings in our booth caused a bit of a traffic jam. (Ok, MORE than a bit, there was a whole security contingent issued to sort the mayhem.)

I am averaging about one post a decade at this pace. Let’s relive the magic and splendor of Comic Con with the belief that if a picture tells a thousand words, you are about to experience a million word essay!

It is always magical to see Brian Froud and his wife Wendy, the artists who created the visuals for The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. (Photo taken by Dave McKean, director of MirrorMask, the third of the three Jim Henson fantasy films.)

Jim Rose (holding up a vintage poster for his Circus) is right: San Diego Comic Con is full of the strangest things one will EVER see...

An example of the aforementioned insanity... From Art Nouveau... to LEGOs! In only twenty paces!

Because Michaelanne LOVES "CHiPs"! Her first celebrity connection at Comic Con? Erik Estrada!

Roaming the wilds of the Midwest, where the economy flourished in the days of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, I came across the remains of a lovely woman who lived to the ripe old age of 92 years. “My success in the arena of longevity,” she insisted, “is due to my attention to health, regardless of public conception as I subscribe to only the most modern of medical advances.”

Well, that’s what she said in 1910. Shortly thereafter she changed her motto to “If you find something that works, stick with it.”

One prong of her two-pointed attack at warding away the Grim Reaper was a sophisticated Hydrotherapy machine. The other, a Polysine Generator.

Arrow Indicates Positive Pole...

Complete with Asbestos pads and metal hand-bars which connected to the terminals and delivered a gentle electric shock, this is the equivalent of a home Electroshock Therapy Machine were one to turn that beautiful voltage controller uppppppppppp someplace a little more… aggressive.

Red jewelled power light; modality selector; voltage controller...

Steampunk? Perhaps. Revolutionary? Certainly.

This will be disassembled here at some point in the near future, as its brilliantly designed modality selector and polysine generator combination appears to be perfectly suited to electrically exploring specific frequencies aligning with the aetheric plane, which according to the notes I acquired- in the hand of Thomas Edison, no less- could facilitate audio communication with what he referred to as “the dearly departed”.